Author: Sarah Castille

Book: Full Contact (Redemption #3)

tl;dr recommendation: Great sex, some confusion in the storyline, lots of fighting. Three Stars.

Book Summary:

When you can’t resist the one person who could destroy you…

Sia O’Donnell can’t help but push the limits. She secretly attends every underground MMA fight featuring The Predator, the undisputed champion. When he stalks his prey in the ring, Sia is mesmerized. He is dominant and dangerous and every instinct tells her to run.

Every beautiful thing Ray “The Predator” touches he knows he’ll eventually destroy. Soft, sweet and innocent, Sia is the light to Ray’s darkness-and completely irresistible. From the moment he lays eyes on her, he knows he’s going to have to put his dark past behind him to win her body and soul.

Longer Review:

I can officially report that the tag line of “Fifty Shades meets Fight Club” is fairly accurate. I LOVE a fighter story. I LOVE FSOG. So, combining these two shouldn’t have been an issue for me. I liked the plot, I liked the characters, and I liked the sex. But that’s the thing – I just liked it. This may sound a little picky, but here we go.

Sia is an incredibly talented tattoo artist. She dreams of opening up her own shop one day – she also dreams of getting underneath of the Predator. Is it possible that the Predator (what’s his real name again?? oh yes, Ray) wants her too? When a crisis forces her tattoo shop to find a new venue, Sia finds herself working in the same building as Ray – and all of the other fighters at Redemption, the training facility. It’s basically an alpha dog shitshow over there.

I know that Sia was confused about what Ray did for a living, but I was REALLY confused. There also a lot of back and forth between Ray and Sia. Don’t Go – Stay – Don’t Go – Stay – Mark me forever – leave me forever. It was a lot.

Sia is attempting to overcome her own issues and while Ray doesn’t know exactly what they are, he senses them and tries to adjust. He, of course, has his own demons that he’s trying to overcome. While he has an undeniable pull to Sia, he doesn’t want to pull her into his dark world, where everything is his fault and he doesn’t feel that he can protect the ones he loves. This is all stuff that I absolutely loved.

As for the other stuff….well, the use of the nicknames of the characters interchangeably was so hard to follow – I had to learn two names for everyone and I really think that Sia yelling “Doctor Death!” or “Rampage!” or “Predator!” in a non-fight cheering scenario was sort of hilarious, in a probably shouldn’t be funny kind of way. I also didn’t like how the author would summarize dialogue between the characters in real time. When actual dialogue was happening the story flowed well, but it seemed that she was trying to save pages or something and summarized a bunch of stuff prior to jumping into the dialogue. It just felt off.

Also, I had to REALLY SUSPEND my real life knowledge for the trial / criminal investigation parts of this story. I know it’s a story. It’s fiction. I get it. Just know that’s not how it works. I’ll stop now.

Now for the important stuff:  the sex scenes between the two of them are off-the-charts hot. I wouldn’t say that they’re FSOG level, but there’s a a little pain involved, and some rope. Those scenes I could totally get behind. he he 😉 Speaking of…anyone have some vodka? THAT SCENE WAS CRAZY HOT.

So basically, if you’re craving an alpha dog fighter story, you should pick this up. Three stars from me!

[I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review]